"INFO - What is Stellar about?

17 Vote(s) - 2.65 Average

Stellar is a non-profit organisation which “aims to expand financial access and literacy worldwide by building a common financial platform….around 2.5 billion people across the world cannot afford a bank account. Stellar gives everyone a chance to be banked, save money, build credit, start a business, or otherwise participate in the global economy – free of fees and other charges” (Stellar website). It is a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people and aids transfer of money fast, discreetly, and almost free. Their mission is to expand financial access and literacy worldwide. It makes sending, saving and receiving money hassle-free and as easy as sending an email or creating a blog. Recently, there has been a noticeable global transition to digital money – Stellar ensures that people get educated and have access to this. What sets Stellar apart is that:1. It is almost free. It is extremely cheap (about $0.000000027 per transaction) unlike Forex and the likes.2. It is very fast. Stellar transfers are fully completed in seconds, unlike Bitcoin.3. It has a strong backing. Though it is open source and not owned by anyone like Bitcoin, it maintains a strong backing behind it – The Stellar Foundation board and advisors https://www.stellar.org/about/) which includes Mozilla foundation board members, the CEO of WordPress, CTO and CEOs of Stripe, the ex-COO of Square and senior exec at PayPal, the director of MIT Media Lab, the director of Apache Software Foundaton and a co-founder of Dogecoin.Okay so that’s the serious part. If you are like me, you might be wondering “how do I get started with Stellar?” As it turns out, It is pretty easy to get started all you need is an account and some Lumens. Hold on, don’t go searching on how to capture light rays. Lumens is the currency of the Stellar network. To make use of the Stellar payment medium, your Stellar account has to be credited with some money (Lumens: the currency of the Stellar Network) by the use of a Currency Exchange. This works by letting you give the Exchange some money(fiat or other cryptocurrency e.g bitcoin) and they in turn credit your Stellar account with Lumens. Once this is done, you can now transfer money within the Stellar network without need for the Exchange anymore. Cool right? Now lets get to the fun part, learn how to get a stellar account here, and how to get some lumens here.Reference: Stellar.org